Two Restaurants

Here’s the sample input: undercooked chicken.

Restaurant 1′s manager:

“That chicken won’t take very long at all to cook – I’ll get it replaced for you right away. I’m so sorry about this, there’s really no excuse for it. While you’re waiting, are there any appetizers I can get for you? On the house, of course. Let me get you some menus – choose whatever you’d like.”

Restaurant 2′s manager:

“We’ll fix it,” with the dish yanked roughly from me and a replacement dropped wordlessly on the table minutes later, without hint of apology or even embarrassment. Annoyance, on the other hand, is exuded in abundance.

Which restaurant do you feel better about?

Restaurant 1 is a clear paragon of basic decency and above-average customer service. Restaurant 2, despite delicious but somewhat high-end fare, gives the same rude service you’d expect from the most indifferent fast food joint at the busiest rush hour.

But why bother giving above-average customer service? It takes time, it can be expensive, it may require significant investments in training if your team is large or spread out.

The business case is an obvious one: negative word of mouth travels with much more grease than does positive. One bad customer interaction can mean the loss of future business not only from the person you’ve disappointed, but also from many of the people they know. There’s also the trope about it costing more to replace a customer than to keep one. Worst of all, if other customers witness an especially bad interaction, they might abandon you themselves despite an otherwise trouble-free experience. No one wants to deal with a someone who looks like a crook.

That’s a short list and there are plenty of practical reasons not to screw your customers. They all miss the point.

You should give above-average customer service because it’s fucking wrong to give anything less.

I am not a man of any faith. There are few things I hold sacred. This is one of them: If you work a job at a business and interact with customers, whether you are the lowest paid hourly employee or the CEO, your highest duty is to the customer. Not to policy, not to your boss, not to your shareholders, not to anyone alive before your customer.

Why? You would starve without them. The roof over your head, the lunch in your stomach, the weekend trip you’re about to take – all of it exists thanks to the grace and honesty of the customer who will pay, time and again, for access to your goods or services. If their satisfaction, their absolute fucking bliss, is not at the core of what you’re doing, you are absolutely, one hundred percent doing it wrong. I don’t care if all you’re doing is punching the clock, if your boss doesn’t care about you, if you hate the stupid uniform. I’ve been there, it sucks. Doesn’t make a difference – you still owe the customer the very best you have to offer. It is your duty. In my retail days I sometimes broke the rules and defied my boss to make my customers happy while giving them the respect their patronage had earned them.

When you ignore that duty, when you maximize profit and personal convenience at the expense of loving your customers, you will eventually be slaughtered brutally and painfully and your customers will laugh when that day comes. Want proof? Look at Blockbuster. Everyone who existed in North America in the 90′s has at least one tale of woe at the hands of the video store’s brutal late fee policy. Blockbuster stocked only movies that were obvious mainstream bets, with a few token art house and foreign selections, without bothering to sort out what their customers actually wanted to watch.

Then, one day, technology changed, allowing the entry of a bizarre new competitor. Netflix, out of nowhere, showed up and gave customers genuine respect. Netflix provided a service with generous, flexible terms, abundant selection and entirely reasonable pricing. The offering was so compelling, people changed their habits to accommodate this weird mail order movie service. Netflix, in turn, listened to their customers and broadened their selections further while building ever more distribution facilities to ensure that no one had to wait more than a day or two for fresh movies. Through Watch Instantly, Netflix continues providing incredible value instead of becoming complacent and allowing the rise of someone else with a better feel for the needs of their customers. Most importantly, when a customer has a beef, Netflix makes it right with friendly, generous customer service and proactive communication that owns up to every screwup.

It’s up to you. Do the right thing for each customer every single time and sleep well at night with the knowledge that your business is safe and you’re a good person. As for the alternative: I have a handy chart for that you may find instructive.

Choose wisely.

Footnote:

If you’re wondering, restaurant 1 is the excellent Spice in Winter Park, FL. Restaurant 2 is Greens & Grille, in Orlando. Greens & Grille has one particular manager who seems so exceedingly annoyed at the very existence of my girlfriend and I that we routinely forgo their delicious, sublime organic meals because we’d rather not feel quite that unwelcome. We eat three times a day. That grumpiness has cost them, in the last six months, what could have easily totaled hundreds of bucks because they’d get our business a few times a week if we actually felt welcome there.

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